ADC Presents – Preview of the “Edge Prototype” tool for HTML5 | Adobe TV.
Edge is touted as “A tool for doing HTML5 animations” but personally I’m guessing this is how Adobe plans to handle the whole “Flash” situation as time goes on.
A number of things struck me as I watched the video:
Layer palette “is the DOM” which (directly?) translates into divs which are given the properties defined in other parts of Edge (e.g. the name is the id). That’s an interesting approach, but I’m curious to see how quickly (if) things get out of control on a markup level.
Timeline based. Edge is actually timeline heavy which is a turn off for me, but it’s simply gravitational for new users. Adobe is attempting to lower the barrier for entry with HTML5 animations and become a leading company through the masses.
Uses Webkit, which is credited for providing the HTML5 features Edge is based upon. We’ve all been waiting for a tool that is a true-to-life WYSIWYG preview of our work. I don’t mean WYSIWYG in the terms of the lameness that earned the name WYSIWYG, but a pixel-accurate view of what our work will look like in browser.
Edge requires jQuery and a number of other jQuery-based dependencies. It’s great to see jQuery satisfying another need.
I’m curious how far Adobe will take Edge. We all know that as great as HTML5 is, tools like these can produce the same junk we have no problems complaining about on a daily basis. We’ll see what happens.
Comments
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. That does seem like an awful lot of HTTP requests for the js scripts, though, looking at a site I’m working on it’s actually not that much more.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by nexus11, Teddy Matayoshi. Teddy Matayoshi said: Adiós Flash, Hola Edge http://bit.ly/cspa5n #flash #adobe #html5 […]
What is an HTML5 animation?
I’m specifically asking about something intrinsic to HTML and not CSS3 or Javascript.
Watching this demo scared me a little bit. This is the same company that makes Dreamweaver.
I think the people that push the envelope with this will be the same people that pushed the envelope with flash. They’ll create glitzy micro-sites for bands and movies and projects and for a little while people will think it’s cool. Then they’ll realize that nothing has really changed, except that the sites will work on the iphone and ipad.
Meanwhile, other people will be quietly creating components that appropriately solve specific problems. No one will pay them much attention, but they’ll be the ones getting real work done.